The present invention relates to toy vehicles and, more specifically, to tracked toy vehicles having mechanisms for changing the arrangement of the wheels.
Tracked toy vehicles are known. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,871,297, and 5,135,427 both disclose toy vehicles having two wheel trains that drive a separate continuous track to move the vehicle. Further, tracked toy vehicles having one or more motors, particularly radio-controlled motors, that drive the wheel trains of the tracked vehicles are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,427.
Furthermore, tracked vehicles having mechanisms for changing the position of one or more of the wheels of the wheel trains are shown in both U.S. Pat. No. 4,483,407 of Iwamoto et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 2,860,715 of Bouffort. In Iwamoto et al., a vehicle for transporting a television camera and a manipulator arm has two wheel trains on opposite sides. Each wheel train has four wheels on axles fixed to the chassis and a fifth wheel mounted on a mechanism which moves the fifth wheel in an arcuate path around the fixed wheels so that the continuous tracks are configured in either a generally triangular arrangement or in the standard two-sided tractor configuration. Bouffort discloses a tracked vehicle for carrying at least one person, and preferably a weapon, that is powered by an internal combustion engine. The Bouffort vehicle has two wheel trains each having two wheels fixed to the chassis and three wheels mounted on separate lever arms that are movable so as to move the wheels with respect to the chassis.
Although tracked toy vehicles are known as described above, none of the known toy vehicles have a mechanism(s) for moving the wheels of the wheel trains. It would be desirable to provide a tracked toy vehicle capable of moving one or more wheels of the wheel trains so as to provide different modes of operation and/or to transform the appearance of the vehicle.